Lupold's not talking about cancer. He's talking about beer.
He and his colleague Alan Meeker both study prostate cancer
during their workweek, but on the weekends they turn their
attention to making the perfect brew. A scientist through
and through, Meeker approaches brewing just as he does his
research. "I'm totally anal," he admits. "I have brew
notebooks full of every little detail."

Lupold, on the other hand, is more freewheeling. "In
science I'm very meticulous and I keep logs of everything,"
he says. But when it comes to beer, "I just kind of wing
it."

Whatever their approach, biologists seem to make good
brewmeisters. Last fall Lupold's pale ale won the Maryland
Brewer's Oktoberfest competition. And Meeker's pale ale
recipe has been used by Clipper City Brewery since fall of
2001, when he won the All Maryland Homebrew Pale Ale
Competition.

So what's the secret to good homemade beer? "To make
really, really good beer you have to be fairly well on top
of a number of variables ... things like oxygen,
temperature, the quality of your starting ingredients,"
says Meeker. "It does help to be a scientist, especially a
biologist, because you can really understand every step of
the process." — Kay Downer